UCS TIE Bomber

[Walter Kovacs]

Hello, and welcome to another of my MOCs, where I solicit feedback, and attempt to integrate myself into your community at the same time.

A few notes about this design. First, I know there are better TIE Bomber MOCs out there. I've seen a couple out on Brickshelf. But mine does have a different approach to the design, and has featues that the others don't have. I'll get to those in a bit. Second, although this was the fourth MOC I designed, it was the first that actually appears on film. That made it just a little bit harder, since there was less room for interpretation. Finally, it is the first design where I really tried to add lots of greeblies. I'm not sure how successful I was; I'll let you tell me.

Without further ado, I give you my TIE Bomber.

The overall shape should be very accurate. I had a good schematic to follow, so aside from a few rounding errors, the overall profile looks good. Here is a shot of the model on its display Stand.

I seem to remember, from my days playing TIE Fighter, that the Bombers laser cannons are stacked and were at the center of the ship. That's where I put them, at least. If I'm wrong, please tell me, since I was relying on a memory of a game I haven't played in 12 years.

A cutaway shot of the Cockpit. It's a little short on detail, but not too bad. The two blue bricks you see at the top are inverted 2 x 2 slopes with computer screen printing. They can be found in the Alpha-1 Rocket Base, if you're familiar with that set. I thought they added a nice touch, even with the color clash. Too bad they don't exist in Gray. The top of the cockpit does have a hatch that opens, but I'm not truly happy with it.

A shot showing the Greeblies behind the Pilot's seat. I tried my best to fill this empty space, but it was my first attempt at doing so much detailing. It sort of looks thrown together, probably because it is. Any suggestions here would be much appreciated.

A Back View. I couldn't find any references that showed the actual locations of the Ion Engines themselves, so I put them between the Cockpit Pod and Ordinance Pod. I have a sneaking suspicion they belong on the Ordinance and Cokpit Pods themselves. Could somebody clarify?

Now for the unique feature of my design. I thought it would be interesting to see how the ordinace was actually loaded into the Pod, so I made a Bomb Rack. You can see some missiles laying in the rack. The lowest section, which unfortunately is difficult to see in this picture, contains a Bomb Load. It's two studs wide, two bricks tall, and six studs long, made out of Black bricks and yellow plates, if you should want to know. The back of the rack has doors that rotate up to keep the missiles and bomb load from falling out.

Here is a picture of the back, with the Rack extended and the doors open. The rack is held into place using a 1 x 2 plate with door rail and a couple of 1 x 4 slotted bricks. Certainly something I haven't seen before, but I'm not sure how accurate it is.

I have some serious questions about the stability of the entire model. First, the wings are almost certainly too heavy for the Cockpit side pylon (the Ordinance side pylon is built like a brick shithouse. That pylon extends all the way to the cockpit). Even with a lighter wing design, I am concerned that the pylon will pull out of the cockpit. I may need to do some major reinforcement of the cantilevered 2 x 2 slopes that make up the cockpit walls.

I only need about 100 pieces to be able to construct this model (approx $25 USD, not including S&H). As soon as I have some spare cash for a BL order, I'll buy the pieces and start construction. Then I'll find out exactly what I have. Until then, the MLCad and POV-Ray images will have to suffice.

As always, Criticisms and Comments are welcomed and much appreciated. The only way to learn is to find out where your mistakes are.

[commandosevy]

Cool! I like it, it looks better than some of TLC's UCS sets.

I wish it was available to me, because it's really really good.

It looks better than the TIE Intercepter (UCS) .

[Walter Kovacs]

Thanks for the comment, commandosevy.

If you want it, you may certainly have it. Since it was designed in MLCad, instructions are very easy to generate. I usually put everything into steps as part of the design, because it makes interference hunting much easier.

One word of warning, though. I mentioned that the wings are most likely too heavy. I can give you the current design, and let you figure out the wings on your own. Or, you could wait until I redesign them, and get the complete design all at once. Your decision.

There are two ways for me to get you the design.

1. I could simply e-mail you the raw MLCad file. It's around 140 kb, and you would need LDraw and MLCad installed on your computer to use it. You would also need to know how to use the file to get instructions, but I could walk you through that process fairly easily. LDraw and MLCad are free downloads, BTW.

2. I could generate a PDF from the MLCad pictures, and post that on Brickshelf. This one is much more painful, because the PDF file is something on the order of 25 MB. That's an awful big file to upload, and a large file to download as well.

3. You could wait till I get a new computer that can run POV-Ray fast, and I could use LPub to generate high quality instructions. The file size would still be huge, but having less pages would still be smaller than 25 Meg. BTW, don't hold your breath on this option.

Let me know what you want to do.

[Walter Kovacs]

Someone over on the FBTB forums asked me for the instructions to the TIE Bomber. I've uploaded the .PDF file and a parts list into the Brickshelf folder. The link is in the first post. Check it out if the mood strikes you.

Just as an aside, since all of my designs are MLCad, I can produce instructions PDFs easily for all of them. Just holler if you want them.

[Ogel111]

I really love that! but i don't think its in scale with the other ucs ties. but it would be a great minifig scale set!